College Point Depot (mtamaster edition)

The College Point Depot, located on 28th Avenue near Ulmer Street in the College Point section of Queens, is a bus garage built in 1998, and owned by the NYCDOT and leased to MTA Bus, and formerly leased to Queens Surface Corporation before it was taken over by MTA Bus.

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Queens Surface Corporation History

Queens Surface Corporation was a bus company in New York City, United States, operating local service in Queens and the Bronx and express service between Queens and Manhattan until February 27, 2005, when the MTA Bus Company took over the operations. Queens Surface Corporation was originally privately held by the Burke family.

The New York and Queens County Railway became the largest trolley line in Queens in 1896, through the consolidating of four previous streetcar operators: Flushing and College Point Electric Railway, Long Island City and Newtown Railway, Newtown Railway, and the original Steinway Railway Company. It served Long Island City, Woodside, Astoria, North Beach, College Point, Jamaica, and even the Queensboro Bridge. Between 1903 and 1922, the NY&QC became an affiliate of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. In 1930, the Woodside Car barn was hit with a massive fire that destroyed much of their fleet, along with the fleet of their competitors, the Steinway Railway(see below). In 1932 it was reorganized as the New York and Queens Transit Corporation, and ended trolley service in 1937.

The Steinway Railway operated in northwestern Queens in 1892, through the merger of the Rikers Avenue and Sanford Point Railroad and Steinway and Hunters Point Railroad, only to be acquired by NY&QC in 1896. As NY&QC faced bankruptcy in 1922, it began to sell off Steinway as a somewhat independent company. It was actually bought by the Third Avenue Railway System but was allowed to operate under its own name. In the Fall of 1938 the company was bought by Queensboro Bridge Railway Company and renamed as Steinway Omnibus as it began operating bus lines over former trolley lines in 1939. In 1959 the company changed their name again to Steinway Transit.

In 1926, NY&QC established a bus division called the Queens-Nassau Transit Lines which replaced all trolleys by 1937. It was renamed Queens Transit Corporation in 1957. The company was owned by the Salzberg scrap metal interests, which had ripped up the rails, until 1988, when the Linden Bus Company acquired the routes. Shortly thereafter and before operations commenced, Linden Bus Company changed its name to Queens Surface Corporation.